Wheelchair Education Evidence

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 70 million people with disabilities need wheelchairs for mobility. A poorly-fitted wheelchair can lead to secondary problems and injuries, as well as abandonment. (World Health Organization, 2008)

There is an unequal geographic distribution of rehabilitation professionals, and therefore, wheelchair service provision is different in every country. In fact, wheelchair content varies significantly across professions and settings. (Fung et al., 2017 ) .

WHO has developed packages for a more standardized wheelchair service provision included the recommendation of an 8-step model. The WHO packages include open-access training materials with several resources.

The International Society of Wheelchair Professionals (ISWP) has created the Integration committee within the Training Group dedicated to support the integration of wheelchair service provision content into educational programs across high and low resourced settings considering the WHO 8-step wheelchair service provision model. ISWP has been in touch with OT, PT, and O&P University programs integrating, or planning to integrate wheelchair content.

“SMART is a key component of a comprehensive wheelchair education and training.”

Hassan Sarsak
Professor, Al Batterjee Medical College, Saudi Arabia

“SMART is an open access resource that has been a very friendly user toolkit for all of us.”

Hassan Sarsak
Professor, Al Batterjee Medical College, Saudi Arabia

“SMART is a promising toolkit that suggests an opportunity to initiate global partnerships between universities for a standardized and more comprehensive wheelchair education.”

Hassan Sarsak
Professor, Al Batterjee Medical College, Saudi Arabia

“Integration of the SMART into wheelchair education worldwide helps guide rehabilitative educational curricula development with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of wheelchair service provision.”

Hassan Sarsak
Professor, Al Batterjee Medical College, Saudi Arabia

“We all know how important it is to teach these skills and help the future generation of therapists feel confident to pass on the skills to their clients.”

Lori Rosenberg
Professor, Hebrew University, Israel

“The SMART helped me organize a hands-on workshop on wheelchair skills and the students' feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”

Lori Rosenberg
Professor, Hebrew University, Israel

“With the help of the SMART, the next generation of therapists will know how and why to teach wheelchair skills to their clients.”

Lori Rosenberg
Professor, Hebrew University, Israel

“The resources on SMART helped me plan an interactive workshop on wheelchair skills for 2nd year OT students.”

Lori Rosenberg
Professor, Hebrew University, Israel